Macintosh Plus with PowerBook 540 upgrade

[just.in.time]

As the title states, I'm thinking of upgrading a Macintosh Plus with the internals of a PowerBook 540.

This would include the display, power supply, logic board, hard drive, and floppy disk drive, sleep light, and brightness/contrast controls.

The PowerBook 540's hinges are on their way out and the plastics are in mediocre condition. It's power supply smells like fish, definitely needs a recap there.

The Plus is missing its CRT and the flyback transformer is dying.

Operationally, the PowerBook seems to be in okay shape aside from a stuck pixel and a floppy drive whose eject mechanism needs some cleaning and lubrication.

This seems like a great way to skip the whole SE/30 greyscale/040 upgrade costs and go straight into an upgraded system.

Any thoughts on this? I already have a very nice condition Plus, a 540c, and two 520c units so neither system would be missed.

 

[Themk]

That seems like a cool upgrade. I would be interested in seeing a finished product like that. 68LC040 and greyscale in a Plus case sounds nice to me! Hopefully you can live with the stuck pixel (Or replace the PB display).

 

[just.in.time]

I'm placing it at project number two position (first is restoring some batteries for my 540c).

That said, yeah the stuck pixel will be okay. Way better than the jitteriness that the dying flyback was inflicting on the CRT that used to be in the machine.

I'll add to this thread once I commence working on it.